E. Phillips Oppenheim

“ It is only in the moving pictures that a doctor must look like a doctor, a judge like a judge, an anarchist like an anarchist, a painter like a painter; the age of machines, hygiene and single-type clothing has so blurred men into indistinguishability that only a few musicians still look like musicians, a feat accomplished simply by the slight impoverishment of barbers. The young man in the library was actually a painter, but Muriel may well have been amazed that she knew it ”

“ A good listener is one who understands what you're saying. Renfrew Mears has just lately learned enough to keep quiet, for fear if he speaks at all, it'll show he doesn't understand anything!”
“Well, if he doesn't, why did you talk to him?”
“Good gracious!” Muriel cried. “We can't always express ourselves as we wish to, in this life, Mamma; I should think you'd know that by this time! I can't throw rocks at him and say, 'Go back home!' every time he comes poking over here, can I? I have to be polite, even to Renfrew Mears, don't you suppose?” ”

“ Nothing was to be heard in the room except movements of a servant and the audible eating of fat little Robert, who was incurably natural with his food.
It was Muriel who finally decided to speak. “I'm sorry to have interrupted your conversation,” she said frostily. “Perhaps, though, you'd prefer not to say any more about me to Papa and Robert while I'm here to explain what really happened, Mamma.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Mr. Eliot said. “I suppose even the Pope gets 'peevish' now and then; it's no deadly insult to say a person got a little peevish. ”

“ Eliot cried. “What a way to talk!”
“But if I did,” Muriel continued, with some sharpness, “I should never select Renfrew Mears to be my assistant in the task. And as for what you call 'love,' it seems to me a rather unhealthy form of excitement that I'm not subject to, fortunately.”
“You are so queer,” her mother murmured; whereupon Muriel laughed.
No doubt her laughter was a little condescending. “Queer?” she said. “No—only modern. Only frank and wholesome! Thinking people look at life as it really is, nowadays, Mamma. I am a child of the new age ”

“ Then she descended the stairs and went toward the dining-room, but halted suddenly, unseen, outside the door. She had caught the word “painter,” spoken by her father.
“Well, I'm glad you liked that painter.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Eliot said. “I talked it over with him, and I'm afraid he agreed with you instead of with me. Naturally, he would, though! I was quite interested in him.”
“You were?”
“Yes—such an unexpected type.”
“Well, no,” Mr. Eliot said. “Nobody's an unexpected type nowadays. Isn't Muriel coming down at all?” ”

“ When he does fail, his disappointment is so slight that he forgets all about it the next moment, and should you ask him if he has any superstition, he will laugh disdainfully, with no idea that he deceives both his questioner and himself. ”

“ They made this mistake the more naturally because Muriel herself made it, though of course she did not think of her supposed lack of romance as a fault. She believed herself to be a severely practical person, and an originally thinking person, as a quotation from one of her essays may partly explain. “I face the actual world as it is; I face it without superstition, and without tradition. Despising both the nonsense and the misery into which former generations have been led by romance, I permit no illusions to guide my thinking. I respect nothing merely because it is established ”

“ Mrs. Eliot had gone out of the room; Muriel could still go out of the house. Therefore she put on a hat, descended the stairs and went toward the front door in a manner intended to symbolize insulted pride taking a much more important departure than the mere walking out of a room. ”

“ Renfrew's case with his pretty neighbor was also weakened by the liking and approval of her father and mother, who made the mistake of frequently praising him to her; for when parents do this, with the daughter adverse, the poor lover is usually ruined—the reasons being obvious to everybody except the praising parents. ”

“ She was a kind-hearted girl, and she believed that “capitalism” was the cunning device of greedy men to keep worthy persons under heel; hence it followed that all “capital” should be taken away from the “capitalist class” by the “people;” ”